


Inlectus

by argyleam



Category: Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi
Genre: D/s, F/M, Gray Morality, In Medias Res, Manipulation, Telepathy Sex, more character study than porn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-08
Updated: 2018-01-08
Packaged: 2019-03-02 08:41:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13314567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/argyleam/pseuds/argyleam
Summary: “Go on,” he said.





	Inlectus

“He wanted me to run away with him.” Rey said. 

Finn barked out a laugh and shook his head. “That’s a joke, right?” he said.

“Didn’t feel like one.” She thought but didn’t say: _I think he wanted me to save his soul._

In the dark she saw it; when she tried to sleep, instead of the island she saw the offer the way Kylo Ren saw it, on the bridge of Snoke’s ship: the two of them surrounded by silent explosions in space. But where they were, there was quiet. It was what he wanted: the quiet. 

She understood how he got there from here. It was true that she saw him and all the noise just - blanked out. It did, the world around her went silent. It was just the two of them in the shining dark. All the voices stopped.

Rey had grown up alone on the desert, though. She liked the noises. She liked the hum and sound of people, not just people, the little animals, the water moving in the cooling system, the hiss of the air exchange. She liked the busyness of it, the long thrum of the ship, the way she could feel them all hanging in space like a heartbeat. On Jakku she had always listened for all the little voices, for the sound of insects down in the shade of the downed ships moving single grains of sand, for the way the tiny grasses on the dunes brushed each other in the wind.

Kylo Ren wanted all the noise to stop, and to float there with her in the silence. She could feel it rolling off of him like chill rolling off metal. To be alone, to be alone, to be alone with her. For it to stop, for it to end, to not be haunted. He’d done in real life what he’d done a thousand times in his nightmares. He’d heard it all echoing back at him, before he’d ever picked up a lightsaber. There was a part of him that hoped that if he just went through with it all the voices would stop and he’d stop having to wait. Stop having to wait for the day when his father fell, when his mother screamed, when he let everyone down.

It was painful even to touch. When a fighter came in from outside, landed from the black, there was a moment where all the metal groaned and vapor rose as the cold of space met atmospheres.If you touched it without gloves the cold would take your skin off. That's what it was like, that throbbing thrumming drumbeat Kylo Ren made.

It wasn't the only sound. She could only bear it because it wasn't the only sound.

He had - feelings about her. They both had feelings, probably. That was fine, in its own way. He was so, so frightened, and there she was, somehow all the things that Luke couldn't be, all the things that Snoke had kept from his apprentice. All Kylo Ren wanted was to kneel to someone who would make the screaming in his head stop.

She turned over that moment aboard Snoke’s ship in her mind when they turned together to face the guards. It had been pitched battle, but she remembered the fleeting revelation of his body under the quilted weight of the imperial uniform when she fell against his back Sturdy. Clammy. He smelled sweaty, and sour, and scared. 

Something in her chest that she’d always trusted had clanged _mine_. The sound that rang when she saw BB-8, when Finn grabbed her hand, it sounded when she touched Kylo Ren’s hand. Hers, hers. Hers to save.

A small, frightening part of her wanted to hurt him, and she didn’t know what it meant. A strange little part of her wanted him to kneel. 

He was dangerous. He would rip their tattered fleet to shreds and bones, he would leave nothing alive while he still thought that he could get what he wanted.

But in her dreams she was strong and good and didn't need to be careful. In the space between them - in that strange Force dreamscape - the touch of his mind on hers was. Soft. Like he was bowing his long, pale neck to her. It felt strange to want it. 

_Are you here?_ he said in her head as she lay in her bunk in the new base, trying to dream about the island. _Come sit with me. Come touch me._

“I’d sooner touch a dung beetle,” she said, sitting up, and he laughed, that low laugh that - whether she wanted it to or not - made her shiver. 

He was alone in his chambers. She supposed as the new Supreme Leader of the First Order, he probably had some palatial, shining black rooms to pace around in. Lots of space to really get his cape swirling. But whenever she saw him he was folded into a bunk at one end, like a recruit in the barracks. 

When he came into view this time he was shirtless again, hair wet from the shower. Or maybe he was just that sweaty. Every time she’d met him in real life he’d been sweating, like the fear inside him was boiling over. 

“Come here,” he said.

“I did,” she snapped. “You know you should surrender the First Order to us immediately, yeah?”

He laughed again. “Sit,” he said. 

She was already sitting on her bunk; it was easy enough to sit on his, too. In the narrow little space they sat knee to knee, like they had on Ahch-To. He was so big, close up. She’d never felt small back on Jakku, where she was the biggest human they had in the camp. But he dwarfed her. 

“I really want to hurt you,” she said, suddenly. 

“You can hurt me,” he said, evenly, in that rumbling voice. He was watching her. “I want you to.” 

When she put her fingers to his chest she could feel that cold thrum, under the skin. She could feel the lonely ache of it. She could feel the weird double vision of herself. There was Rey, lonely junker, alone on her bunk, and there was Rey through his eyes, three times taller. A bright, whiteblue heat. Something he wanted, badly.

“Go on,” he said. 

It made sense, in the moment, to put her nails to the exposed pale planes of his torso, and scratch upward, red on white, like the plain on Crait.

Like the place on Crait where he'd killed several dozen people to try to get her attention.

He was still when she dragged her nails against him. His hands were draped loosely over his knees, easy, like he was sitting mindfully in the temple he'd burned. His face was even. If she knew anything about him - and she did - what he'd suffered made this look like a mosquito bite. Like a gnat. Like nothing.

It didn't feel like nothing. When she pressed her hand into the long red lines her nails had left he relaxed, just a little, a tiny sigh. He was still watching her, evenly. Knowingly.

"Close your eyes." she said, sharply, suddenly irritated. What would she do if he said no? But he didn't pause. He shut his eyes.

She scooted closer. This close her knees were on top of his knees, her folded legs cradled inside his. In real life her foot was falling asleep. In real life she also knew what he smelled like, and it wasn't this smell. In her dream he smelled like cheap cleaning solution and sun on sand and the open air of Jakku. Home, she realized irritably. In her dream he smelled like home.

She turned her hand and scratched crosswise across his ribs, left to right, hard enough to sting.

"You know I've killed a lot of people," he said, that rumble that started from somewhere in his chest and echoed in her bones. "You could hit me harder."

She pinched his nipple, hard. "We're not doing what you want." she said. From this distance she could get her teeth into him. If she wanted to. His hair brushed her arms when she put them around his shoulders and put her nails into his back. When she pulled them up from his waist to his shoulder he rippled and swayed, like he was trying to get closer to her, like he was holding himself back.

She hooked one leg over his hip. When she pulled his hair he let out a small, soft noise, and swayed again.

"You're trying not to lean against me," she said, half-amused.

His eyes opened. From this distance his mouth was very red, that big ridiculous mouth in that big ridiculous face. His eyelashes were so long, like a desert animal's. "We're not doing what I want," he said, and one corner of his mouth crooked up.

She slapped him. Not hard. Not even hard enough to feel it on the calluses on her palm. His eyes slotted shut again, involuntarily, and his big, pretty mouth opened. "What do you want?" she said.

He was silent. She put her hand in his hair and gave him a little shake. This time when she slapped him her hand lingered, her thumb at the corner of his mouth.

He turned and drew his lips along it. "You can open your eyes," she said, and he blinked up at her. It was a dream, or - whatever it was, a Jedi hallucination, but his breath on her hand was warm, and his lips on her hand were soft.

"You," he said, and bit her finger.

She shoved it into his mouth up till the knuckle. His cheeks hollowed around her, long, even pressure, and then the swipe of his tongue across the tip. It was - nice. It was something he'd done before, she thought suddenly, and that irritated her too. She pulled her hand free and wiped it on his pants.

"You know I could have bought you off," he said, low. "If I'd been a little more strategic." His eyes were on her. 

She paused for a long moment. “What the hell,” she said, clambering backwards. Disentangling her legs from his felt a lot less dignified than straddling him had. 

The corner of his mouth twisted up into a smirk. He was goading her. He was happy that he’d made her mad. There was a thrum under his skin of _maybe now. Maybe now._

She didn’t care. “I’ve been bought before,” she said, angrily. “I’m not for sale.” 

He leaned forward, intent. His face was close to her in the narrow space. “Everyone has a price.” he said. “If I’d offered you their safety you would have come with me.” 

She paused. “Maybe so.” she said. 

He reached forward. His wrists were upturned, in front of him, his fingers curled up into fists. It was an offer. She reached out, slowly, and grasped one white, bony wrist in her hand. His bones were so big that her fingers didn’t meet around his wrist. His bones were so evident that she could feel his pulse rabbiting under her hand.

"I wouldn't have been any different." he said, watching her. From this distance his eyes were huge in his face.

She considered it. She tried to feel out the shape of it, how the Kylo Ren that offered to save the Resistance transports above Chait would have been different than the Kylo Ren who let the bombardment continue. Or the Kylo Ren who chased them down to the planet's surface in a scream of thwarted hope. Rey wasn't a strategist. She knew that about herself; she trusted her hunches.

"I wouldn't have gone with you even then," she said, finally. Because what was that, in the end? It was Leia on the bridge of the Death Star, watching Vader incinerate Alderaan. Watching someone hold what she loved hostage against her behavior. Watching him destroy it.

His mouth quirked again. "Snoke called me a rabid dog," he said, low, lingering over it like the words were sweet in his mouth. "I am, you know. I'm wild, and I hurt people, and I will tear this galaxy apart with my teeth." He flexed his wrist in her hand. She could feel how easily he could throw her off. His pulse was pounding under her fingers. "But you could be the one who holds my leash."

She slammed his hand into the wall behind his head, her face inches from his. "You're no one’s dog." she said.

"I am," he said, soft and curious. "You'd be a magnificent master, Rey. And I'd kneel on the floor by your throne."

"I’m no one’s master, either,” she said, reflexively. 

"Don't you want to be?" He lifted his free hand. His hands were so big, paws, really. Like a puppy that hadn't grown into its feet.

Dogs again. She shook her head.

"My mother was a princess." he said, watching her. "Her mother was a queen. You are a junk scavenger. You're nobody from nowhere." When he cupped his hand around her waist it went halfway around her, huge. His mind opened up under her, with his hand on her. It bloomed like fire rushing out from an explosion. Like the cloud of atmosphere that burned and consumed itself when it met vacuum.

She was familiar enough with the shape of people looking at her. People on the base did, sometimes. They thought _pretty. Hot. Nice face. Nice arms_. Those thoughts never meant anything to her; she’d always brushed past them when they intruded on her attention.

What Kylo Ren wanted was fire and cold and the dead of space. It went down into her core, down to where she felt the skritching of the beetles under the sand, to the part of her that felt the ship's heartbeat in space. There was a thing that she could be that was huge and glorious to him.

He ran that huge hand up her back, cupped her face. She still had his other wrist. He made no attempt to pull it free. "Nobody from nowhere," he said again, "And you could rule this galaxy with Lord Vader’s grandson kneeling at your feet.”

"I don't need to rule anything," she said, stung like it was an accusation. "You guess wrong."

He shook his head. "Everyone wants to be important." he said, watching her. "You want to know your place."

"Yes," she said, evenly.

He leaned in. "Well.” he said, voice still so low that it throbbed, “I want you to put me in mine.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading. I'm strongly comment-motivated; if you tell me something you liked in this chapter there might be more of it in the next chapter :)


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